Death in Rough Water

by Francine Mathews

  Jackie belched.

  “Or the sort of story you’d use to heal your wounded pride,” Merry said. “Even a suspicious wife would prefer it to the truth—that Del didn’t think you were worth a second glance. Have you always impressed women with your sexual prowess, Jackie? Or just Connie? Is that why you married her?”

  He slammed down the beer and stood up. “I don’t have to listen to this shit.”

  “I’m requesting Sara’s birth certif icate from Boston,” Merry said, clear above the bar’s din. “Joe Duarte thought you were the baby’s father. That’s why he gave you his boat and named you Sara’s guardian. Isn’t that right? He hoped one day Del would come back and you’d all be a family.” She laughed deliberately, to provoke him. “Where did he ever get such a crazy idea?”

  “You think it’s crazy?”

  “Yes. I do.”

  “Because Del was too high-class, is that it? Too good for me? That’s a laugh.”

  The waitress returned with Jackie’s second beer, and he hesitated, eying it. “She wasn’t so high-class she couldn’t get herself knocked up. Walking around like a princess, with those tits and that ass waving in the breeze, wearing those shorts and her hair hanging loose, acting like she’s too good to touch, and all the while—”

  “Sit down,” Merry said. “You can abuse Del all you like. You can abuse me, if it makes you feel good. But we’re going to talk about this one way or another. It can be here, over a beer, or it can be out at the station. You decide.”

  He took a long slug of the beer, still standing, un­committed. She thought for a moment he’d fall back on his customary swagger and head for the street, but her tone had implied too much. Merry was just another woman to him, but she was also a cop with a murder on her hands. Jackie sat down.

  “You couldn’t forgive her for ignoring you, could you?”

  “She was just a bitch.”

  “All that frustration. All the wanting, and the anger. Knowing she gave someone else what she refused to give you. And then she left Nantucket and you knew you’d never have her. So you picked up Connie—poor Connie, who’s so easily impressed. Did you tell Joe you’d fathered the baby when you needed a job on his boat?”

  “He’d have thrown me overboard if I’d tried that,” Jackie said, snort­ing. “I worked up to the idea. He knew I’d always been hot for Del. He could tell. I used to hang around their house, do chores for the old man, hoping I’d run into her. He knew. Everybody knew. And she—”

  “—acted like you didn’t exist. It must have been galling.”

  “I wanted to shake her,” Jackie said, his f ingers white around the sweating glass. “I wanted to bust her till she couldn’t move. I wanted—” He stopped, breathing heavily, his eyes slightly glazed.

  “Let’s not go into exactly how you wanted to hurt Del,” Merry said matter-of-factly. “Did you?”

  He shook his head. “I never got to touch her. Then, or when she got back.”

  “But you let Joe think you had.”

  Jackie shrugged. “Once I had the job, I got close to the old man. He was lonely enough. Once in a while I’d let things drop—like I’d talked to Del, or knew more about her than he realized. Just a few words, here and there. Finally he asked me about it. Forced me to tell him what he wanted to hear. I let him think what he chose. Told him Del f igured I didn’t make enough money, and that’s why she refused to marry me; she wanted more than a f isherman for a husband. So she left me, and I married Connie. That made him mad. Like she’d turned her back on her father’s way of life. And he got to thinking. Maybe if I was better off f inancially, maybe—”

  “Del would come back. Connie would conveniently disappear. Joe would no longer be lonely.”

  “He thought the kid should have a proper father,” Jackie said defen­sively. “And he was right. I should have custody of the kid. The way Del was living, can you blame her dad for wanting to f ind it a good home?”

  Merry looked at his bestial face, thought of Sara, and stif led the urge to scream. “So he died thinking all this was true?”

  “Guess so.”

  “And that’s why you have a boat.”

  “He left it to me, fair and square. Anybody’ll tell you the same.”

  More swaggering self-justif ication. She could see how Jackie’s life had gone—a poor f isherman’s son in the middle of an increasingly wealthy resort; his father’s death, his father’s debt; the boat he’d counted on inheriting sold to pay off its mortgage; the dogged reliance on the only trade he had ever known, the chance at easy money skippering for SeaCon. The rationalizations, the years of self-deceit, the fantasies used to shore up a f lagging ego. Jackie was all-powerful, Jackie was always right, Jackie made the rules. Jackie was a winner, not like the rest of the poor schmucks who made an honest living.

  “You’re used to taking things that aren’t yours, aren’t you, Jackie?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I’m just thinking of SeaCon. Your former employer. How much did they pay you to scuttle the boat?”

  He stared for a moment, f labbergasted. “You’re full of shit.”

  “Am I?”

  “You know it.”

  “They collected four hundred thousand dollars. What was your per­centage? Forty thousand? Or less? Enough to put a down payment on Connie’s house, but not enough to buy your own boat. Of course, you’d made other plans. You were getting a boat from your future father-in-law. Once he was dead, of course.”

  “I didn’t kill him,” Jackie said automatically. “What happened was an accident—”

  “—and anybody’ll tell me the same,” Merry f inished for him. “Right. How much did they pay you, Jackie?”

  He said nothing.

  “Come on,” she said patiently. “I know about Rick Berkowski. And about Charley MacIlvenney. We’ve talked to them.” Not about this exact topic, she thought, but it’s true enough. “Everybody got a nest egg once they scuttled the boats. The mortgages on them must have been low for SeaCon to make a prof it. What were you guys skippering—boats repossessed by the bank and sold at auction for a fraction of their value?”

  Jackie didn’t answer. Merry wasn’t certain he was even listening. She plowed on.

  “Say SeaCon and MariTrans picked them up at bargain-basement prices, paid for them with mortgages, and insured them at replacement value. Then they paid their captains to scuttle the boats in a convincing fashion—preferably in deep water during the winter when the weather made it hard to locate the wrecks—collected insurance for the boat’s full value, paid off the low mortgages, and pocketed the difference. And promptly went out of business.”

  Merry paused for breath, waiting. Jackie looked slightly whipped—by her words or by downing too much beer too quickly.

  “How much is left after Connie takes her share, Jackie?”

  “Not enough,” he whispered. “Not a goddamn enough. Charley and Rick tell you all this?”

  “They didn’t have to,” she said. “It’s pretty obvious. Someone was going to f igure it out sooner or later. You’re just killing time, Jackie, until you’re indicted for fraud along with SeaCon and MariTrans. You know that, don’t you?”

  He laughed harshly. “Those guys’ll never take the fall,” he said. “It’ll be jerks like Charley and Rick and me. They’ll be long gone by the time you catch up with them.”

  “Unless you help me,” she said. “You could make a better deal for yourself with the DA if you tried, Jackie. It wouldn’t take much.”

  He looked at her, considering. “What’d you give Rick and Charley?”

  “I haven’t yet. I wanted to talk to you f irst. I f igured you’d know more. And have more to lose.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Where’s Jerry Dundee, Jackie? Where do I f ind the big f ish?”
>
  He snorted. “You really think he’s the big f ish? You think Dundee’s your man?” He threw back his head and laughed. Something in his face made her realize she’d lost him, and she sat back, disappointed, casting about for another hook.

  Jackie leaned close to her, his breath oppressively beery. “You’ve got a lot more work to do, Merry Folger.” He reached out and actually pinched her cheek, in a gruesome attempt at condescension. She reared backward. “Good luck,” he said. “If all you’ve got is Jerry Dundee, I’ll sleep easy. You’re not gonna be indicting me anytime soon. Call me when you’ve got a case.”

  “I know about the f ight, Jackie,” she said.

  “What f ight?”

  “The one you had with Joe Duarte, the night he died. The shouting match that drew him out of the pilothouse in the middle of a storm, to handle a job he should have left to you. Only you weren’t following orders, were you? Was it deliberate? Did you hope he’d be distracted, not notice when the winch brought the doors in too fast?”

  Jackie shoved his stool away from the table and slapped down a twenty-dollar bill.

  “The Swede says the winch was broken.” Merry rose and faced him. “That he couldn’t control it. Did you have a hand in that, Jackie?”

  “You’re out of your fucking mind,” he said.

  And with that, to her mingled relief and dismay, he really did leave the bar.

  Merry gave him f ive minutes, then walked the few blocks to the Brotherhood.

  It was too early for Dave Grizutto to work his shift, but she was in luck; he was having dinner at the bar.

  “Looks good,” she said.

  “Blue cheese burger. Amazing what a little mold can do for a meal, isn’t it?” He set down his food and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “You’re becoming a regular.”

  “Thought I’d test your fabled knowledge of the island’s drinking hab­its. Does Jenny Baldwin like scotch?”

  “Only if it’s Glenf iddich,” he said immediately.

  So he had Jenny’s tastes pegged, too. Had he set her up that night at Del’s, leaving her favorite drink on the counter? Her bracelet links on the f loor?

  “Why?” Dave asked. “Need a hostess gift?”

  “Not exactly. You know her well?”

  A wariness came into the bartender’s eyes. “Why do I think this isn’t an innocent ques­tion?”

  “Because I’m a cop,” Merry said, exasperated. “I can’t ask somebody the time without causing panic. Come on, Dave.”

  “Sorry,” he said. “You’re right. Anybody else asked me that, I wouldn’t think twice. I know Tom better than Jenny. He’s in and out of here all the time, talking business, meeting clients, that kind of stuff. Jenny just comes looking for him once in a while. Sometimes she seems to expect him, takes a table in the corner and drinks her scotch, and he never shows.”

  “That happen often?”

  “Three times that I can remember.”

  “Funny,” Merry said. “She’s not the sort of woman who’d seem comfortable here.”

  “Because the bar is near the tables?” he said, amused.

  “You know. The tourist crowd, young people, everybody here around midnight trying out the various liqueurs you guys keep.”

  “And she’s too garden-club,” he said.

  “Something like that.”

  “The hairband and the sensible shoes.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I think Mrs. Baldwin has everybody fooled.”

  Merry sat up and looked at him; but his eyes were turned carefully away. He took a bite of his burger and a swig of Coke. “You want anything?”

  She shook her head. “Tell me what you meant, instead of changing the subject.”

  He laughed. “Never try innuendo on Merry Folger.” He set down his glass and pushed his half-eaten burger to the side. “Let’s just say that I think Jenny is lonely. All is not well in the Baldwin household.”

  “Did she come on to you, Dave?”

  “As much as that sort of woman ever does. Her signals were subtler than a twenty-two-year-old’s, but she was signaling all the same.” He looked at her with something like embarrassment. “You’ll think I’ve got a big head.”

  “Not at all,” Merry said, mulling it over. “I f igure you know what you’re looking at.”

  “She drank a bit too much scotch once,” he said. “Back in May. She was here late into the evening, and it was pretty obvious that she was waiting for Tom and he wasn’t going to show. She f inally abandoned the table when the waitress pressured her to order, and moved over here.”

  “And that’s when she—signaled?”

  “She asked when I got off and what I planned to do that night,” he said carefully. “So, yeah.”

  “And you told her—”

  “That I would be here another three hours, had to close up, and was exhausted. I was going home to bed. I thought that was a clear enough refusal.”

  “Jenny didn’t?”

  “She said that sounded like a lovely idea.”

  Despite herself, Merry grinned. She could imagine Jenny’s bleached blue eyes bloodshot with drink, her loosened inhibitions, the voicing of a thought she’d never have allowed to the forefront of her brain in normal circumstances. She would use the word “lovely,” as though a tumble with Dave were comparable to a f ine piece of china, or a good view of the Sound. She had no vocabulary for the coarser things in life.

  “So, Dave?”

  “So what?” He ran his f ingers through his blond hair, and then grim­aced, studying the strands caught on his f ingers. They glinted in the candlelight. Like the hair found on Del’s f loor, Merry thought.

  “Did you take her home?” she persisted.

  He snorted. “I excused myself, called Tom Baldwin at the Yacht Club, and had him pick her up. Apparently he’d forgotten they had a date.”

  “How did Tom treat her?”

  “Pretty coldly.”

  “That’s sad.”

  “It always is, Merry.”

  “Maybe if they’d had children—”

  “Who knows? There’d just be a few more lives damaged by the mess.”

  Merry thought about the Baldwins as she drove toward Tattle Court. Were Tom and Jenny close to divorce? That might give Tom a motive to frame Jenny for murder, leave her bottle and bracelet on a dead woman’s f loor. But why go to such lengths? And why kill Del?

  Because Tom was Sara’s father? And Del intended to tell his wife?

  Or was Dave Grizutto only giving her half the story? He admitted he’d visited Del the night she died, and he knew about Jenny Baldwin’s taste for Glenf iddich. Perhaps his relationship with the developer’s wife had gone farther than Dave said—so far, in fact, that he was ready to be done with it. When he’d killed Del in a f it of passion, and taken Sara’s birth certif icate, he’d set Jenny up for the murder.

  It was still too speculative. Merry had no evidence that Dave killed Del; he had only said he’d been in her house.

  No evidence yet.

  She glanced at the passenger seat of her Explorer, where a napkin and a glass sat carefully wrapped in plastic. She’d said good-bye to Dave and watched him walk back toward the kitchen. Then, taking advantage of the Brotherhood’s habitual semidarkness, she’d casually dropped his empty Coke glass into her voluminous purse, in case Dave’s prints matched any Clarence had found on the harpoon.

  It was a matter of seconds to wipe a Kleenex across the bar, scooping up a few of his blond hairs for comparison with the ones found near Del’s body.

  Going bald was a bitch, Merry thought. A man could lose so much more than just his looks.

  Chapter 25

  On Thursday morning, Chief John Folger released Jenny Baldwin, purse in hand and muttering darkly about the future of the police budget.<
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  Matt Bailey sulked and said he couldn’t move forward on a case that was blown.

  Merry, feeling guilty about Bill Carmichael and the overloaded state police, glanced at the list of Plastech Explosives customers, considered starting at the top with a call to a contractor in Madison, Wisconsin, and decided she couldn’t face it.

  Feeling grumpy and dissatisf ied, she looked over the Request for Court Order forms Howie Seitz had completed, dated them and signed her name, and scanned them to the Boston probate court. It was a glorious June day, and her windowless cubicle was more than usually oppressive. What she needed was a drive out into the moors. Rebecca’s face at the screen door of the Mason Farms saltbox rose in her mind, but if she drove anywhere, it would be to Tom Baldwin’s off ices to inquire about his schedule the previous Wednesday night. And, in a roundabout fashion, the state of his marriage.

  Tom was unavailable, his assistant told Merry when she entered the air-conditioned dimness of the South Beach Street off ice. Merry gave the woman the once-over, curious about Del’s replacement. She was a neat, cool, elegant blonde, dressed in androgynous separates; the sort of woman who went with the neutral-toned furniture and the generic prints on the walls. Everything about Baldwin Builders was rose and beige, including Tom’s assistant, as though she had been acquired with the lamps. An off-island import, Merry decided; very unlike Del. But then, Tom’s lifestyle these days was more upscale than it had been when Del worked for him—and he would use the word “upscale.” In Del’s day he’d rented a place on Washington Street, not far from the Town Pier, and it hadn’t looked like the interior of a Hyatt.

  “Do you know where he can be reached?”

  “He’s at a selectmen’s meeting,” the assistant said. There was an over­tone of the British Isles in her accent, not pronounced enough to be native, but quietly suggestive of breeding and culture. Probably as bottled as her hair color.

  Merry’s brow wrinkled. “I thought they met on Wednesday nights.”